


Veronica Flynn

by RandomWordsAndStormyDays



Series: Random's Fallout OCs [8]
Category: Fallout 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 15:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21322552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomWordsAndStormyDays/pseuds/RandomWordsAndStormyDays
Summary: This is a collection of the ficlets and one-shots for my Sole Surivor, Veronica.
Series: Random's Fallout OCs [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1505954
Kudos: 1





	Veronica Flynn

Awareness trickles in slowly, like waking from a nap that wasn’t planned. Consciousness hangs just out of reach until the coldness of the air around Veronica fills her sense. Her fingers creak like a frozen hing and bits of frost cling to her vault suit, but those things go unnoticed as her vision adjust and the fog on the glass in front of her clears.

There’s a man, dressed in a bomber jacket and covered in weird metal bits, standing with his back to her. There’s a person in a hazmat suit next to him. They don’t look like vault-tec representatives.

One of them has a gun.

Veronica’s eyes dart up from the weapon to look at her husband. His pod is opening and when she sees him he looks as disoriented and groggy as she feels.

Shaun is crying.

They’re trying to take Shaun from her husband, the two strangers. Protectiveness wells up inside of her and Veronica pushes at the glass, trying to open the pod’s door. It doesn’t budge. She’s trapped.

Panic and fear slam into her when the strange man raises his pistol and aims it at Nate. Her voice is trapped, she can’t get any words out. She can’t warn him. Her husband fights them, clutching onto their son with a fierceness that only a parent can show. They demand her child, and the figure in the hazmat suit manages to get a hold of their baby.

“No-” Her voice comes out broken, strained from however long it’s been since she last used those muscles.

Time seems to slow as she recognizes the look in her husband’s eyes. It’s the same look he always has when he wakes up from a nightmare, still trapped on that battlefield in Anchorage. Two things happen at once.

Nate yanks Shaun back from the kidnapper’s grasp.

The gun goes off.

Veronica knows she screams, can feel the sound rip out of her, but she hears nothing. There’s a gunshot in her son’s chest. Shock is clear on the strange man’s face. There’s a gunshot in her son’s chest. Nate falls out of the pod to his knees, his mouth open in a scream. Her baby doesn’t move.

There’s a gunshot in her son’s chest.

When Nate looks up at her, he’s not there anymore. He’s on a battlefield that she’s never seen. She comes back into herself at once and pounds on the glass, trying to break free. In the same second her husband stands, leaving Shaun on the ground. He launches himself at Shaun’s killer, knocking them both to the ground.

Unable to do anything else Veronica scratches at the glass until she leaves streaks of red down its cool surface, shouts at the people who have taken her child from her. Nate is winning, he’s got adrenaline and loss on his side. He’s not thinking about anything else except killing the man who killed his son.

But his emotions make him sloppy.

Nate overestimates how much distance he has to maneuver and slams into his pod. By the time he recovers the gun is back up, pointed at his face.

Veronica hopes he’ll stop fighting, give up now that he’s lost, but she knows he won’t.

Another gunshot. Another scream.

Something drips on her chest and she realizes that it’s her tears. She can’t see Nate’s upper body, the way he landed keeps him hidden from view, but she knows he’s dead. Knows that he’s gone.

From her peripherals she sees the other kidnapper steps forward, kneel down, and pull the blanket back from Shaun’s face. Blood streaks her window but she can see him. His eyes are open. Veronica whimpers, then demands that the woman stop touching her son. Both parties ignore her.

From inside the hazmat suit, a woman speaks. “Even dead, we can still use the DNA.”

“You’re the scientist here,” the man turns to Veronica, still trapped in her icy prison, “and we’ve still got a backup.” His eyes are dead, there’s nothing inside them.

Goosebumps prickles over her skin, both at his words and the emptiness she can see inside him. He killed her son and husband, and feels nothing. No regret, no sadness, not even sick joy. She shivers as he turns away.

The announcement of reinitiating the cryogenic procedure sounds in her pod and she inhales a sharp breath. Her body feels heavy already and she tries to pound on the glass, tries to barter her way our, beg, anything, but she can’t move. Can’t speak. Her vision blurs and then-

Veronica shoots up in bed. Sweat covers every part of her body even as the cool December air blows in from the half collapsed wall and roof of her old home.

It’s the third night in a row she’s relived her time in the vault.

She drops her head into her hands, sobbing into them, trying to keep her voice down. If Codsworth hears her he’ll rush in, ever eager to take care of her. And she doesn’t have the energy to deal with him tonight.

Once her body stops shaking she lies back down, staring through the dilapidated roof to see the stars above her. Nate loved the stars, used to take her outside when the weather was nice, bring a blanket and a bottle of wine. They’d drink and talk until they fell asleep, only to be woken up by the warmth of the sun’s rays, and once by a grumpy police officer.

Thinking of Nate has the tears forming again and she leaves her bed, taking out into the cold, leaving behind her shoes and coat.

Her feet carry her back to the top of the hill, just a ways down from the vault entrance. There, next to two wooden crosses, she collapses. There’s enough space between the two graves that she can lay between them, even if she knows the one is empty.

Veronica closes her eyes and pretends for a moment that Nate just forgot the blanket, that he’s run off to the car to retrieve it, that he’ll be back in a few moments to hold her hand, run his fingers through her hair, kiss her.

These fantasies only hurt her, but sometimes they’re the only things keeping her sane. Keeping her grounded. Keeping her from completely falling apart.

Because losing her husband hurt. Tore out her heart and shattered it into a hundred pieces. She knows, however, that even broken glass can be pieced back together. With enough time, effort, and care, a thousand broken pieces can be carefully glued, taped, welded back into a shape close to what it had been.

But losing her son destroyed her. That is a pain that Veronica doesn’t believe she will ever recover from.

But she keeps pushing, refuses to give up. The Minutemen need her help, at least for now, and as soon as she’s better with a gun, more adept at combat, and can safely leave Garvey in charge, she’s going to find the people who killed her family.

Her husband was nothing but bones when Sturges found her trapped inside her cryo-pod, but the synth in Diamond City says that the Institute is to blame for her loss. Even if everyone in charge of ordering Shaun’s kidnapping is dead, the organization is alive, and that will have to be enough.

And when her enemies have been reduced to nothing but rubble at her feet, well, she knows exactly where they’ll bury her.


End file.
